Clubs, Ceremonies, and Classes.

Saturday, July 5^th~Sunday, July 6^th

Shortly after my last post, which I’d made from an Internet café in Ikebukuro, Shaunte and I returned to the dorm, where Cat was finally up. We ate dinner and planned our night out. We were meeting up with Alex, Robert, and Tim at a hip hop club in Shibuya called Gas Panic. Girls being girls, we took a while to get ready. I think we left the dorm around 9:30pm. Once we got to Shibuya, though, we had to wait a good hour or so for Alex & co. to get there. Luckily the club was easy enough to find. We got there around 11:30pm.

The club was extremely small. There wasn’t even a real dance floor because all the space was taken up by the bar and a couple of separate tables with bar stools. As usual, foreigners didn’t get carded, and there wasn’t a cover charge because they expected you to be buying their expensive drinks all night. Basically, every time one of the bartenders saw you empty-handed, they would come up to you and force you to buy another drink, or else they said you had to leave. The trick was to buy a beer and hold on to the bottle long after it was empty.

The music was surprisingly good. It was mostly R&B and hip hop, with reggae and other random stuff like Daft Punk mixed in. I enjoyed it more than I usually enjoy the music at hip hop clubs back home. As a whole, though, I don’t like hip hop clubs, mainly because the guys are sleazy (and often not even all that attractive) and are just there to try to get into girls’ pants. It seemed to be even worse at this club because there wasn’t really much room to dance, so the majority of the people there weren’t actually dancing at all. It frustrated me because if I go to a club, I go there to dance. Not to hook up, and not to make conversation, either. It’s not like you can actually hear anything anybody says in there because the music is so loud.

Still, because of our curfew, once we stayed out past 11pm, we had to stay out until at least 6am, and dancing for that long is beyond my ability, so I still ended up having to spend a fair amount of time making conversation. I got to practice my Japanese but only a little, because almost everyone in the club spoke English. (It was a very multiracial club—Africans/African Americans, Westerners, and Asians.) The only halfway decent guy in the entire place was a Spanish exchange student at Sophia University. He was amiable and funny and a good dancer, but I only got to hang out with him for a little while before he said he should go back to his friends. The other guys just seemed to grow sleazier as the night wore on. We ended up escaping the club earlier than we’d planned—around 4:45am—because things were getting too crazy in there.

Because the sun rises so early here, it was bright as day when we came outside. We ended up having to wait until 5:20am to catch the first subway back. (The trains and subways here don’t run between ~1am and 5:30am.) Then we had to camp out in front of the dorm for about a half hour waiting for Utsugi-san to open it back up. Cat said she’d had a blast and Shaunte seemed to have enjoyed herself a lot as well, but I’m not sure if I would’ve called this night fun. If I do go clubbing again, I’d much rather go to a techno club, where you can be as crazy as you want to be and not every guy is trying to get into your pants. Once we were allowed back inside, everyone went straight to bed.

I woke up around 11am but spent most of the day lounging around my room. Shaunte came and hung out for a while. We went to OK!, the big supermarket that’s right by our dorm. I bought myself some snacks and spent a good amount of time investigating prices, since my mom is curious whether everything really is so much more expensive here.

The answer is yes and no. Overall, things are expensive, and sizes/portions/quantities are smaller than in America. In many ways, it’s comparable to Europe. I think it’d be possible to survive even on a slightly meager budget, though, if you know where/how to find good bargains, budget your spending carefully, and maybe change your diet a little. I already mentioned how nearly all fruits are expensive here. So, if I were to live here, I’d probably end up having to eat less fruit and more vegetables. Meat is expensive but fish is quite cheap, so I’d probably end up eating more fish than meat (which I don’t really have a problem with anyway, since I’m not a big meat-eater anymore).

As another example, a typical breakfast for me at home is bread with some sort of condiment like jam, peanut butter, or Nutella. Bread, to my surprise, isn’t all that expensive (it doesn’t seem to be all that popular here, so I had thought it might be pricey), but condiments are. They were charging ¥330 for a small thing of peanut butter or Nutella (about half the size of the regular size of these in the States). So, if I were to live here, I would maybe only do bread and condiments on weekends, and just do breakfast bentos on weekdays.

Aside from that, the general rule seems to be that American/Western brands are extremely expensive. I needed to buy laundry detergent, and I discovered an incredible gap in prices between the American brands (eg. Downy), which cost about ¥980 for the smallest-size bottle, and the Japanese brands, which cost about ¥230 for the smallest-size bottle. Tea, too, was cheap overall, except for Western brands like Pickwick, so no Earl Grey tea for me. Snacks and candy are slightly expensive overall in the sense that you don’t get a lot (size-wise) for what you pay, but again, it’s more affordable to buy domestic brands. They had a lot of different kinds of Kit Kat with coatings and flavors, including a green tea kind that looked extremely tasty, but for ¥320 for a small box, it wasn’t worth it to me.

After our trip to the suupaa, we went back to the dorm and chilled some more. No one had the energy to do anything after our long night out. I think we all ended up crashing pretty early.

Monday, July 7^th

It’s Tanabata in Japan today, which is essentially a cultural holiday, though not generally an official one. They have a lot of omatsuri (festivals) in the very suburbs and smaller towns, though nothing special seems to be going on in the city. The main Tanabata tradition is that you write a wish in a small strip of paper and tie it to a stick of bamboo. They told us that we’ll get to do so in class on Wednesday. I’m actually glad for the delay because I don’t know what to wish for yet.

We didn’t have any sort of class today, but we did have to come to school for an official entrance ceremony. The group sessions we had up until now were to prepare us for the official school term, which starts on Wednesday. Today, we walked to a big building and were ushered into a large auditorium for a welcoming ceremony both for us and for the Asian students who have been arriving in the past week and who will be starting school with us on Wednesday.

It was a very long ceremony because everything that was first said in Japanese was then translated into Korean, Chinese, and English, making everything last 3 times as long as it needed to. The only interesting/cool part of the ceremony was that they had some former students come up and give speeches demonstrating how much they learned in one term. It was pretty impressive.

Afterwards, we were free to go for the day. Cat, Shaunte, Lane and I decided to go to Ikebukuro for some shopping because Cat wanted to buy sandals. We ended up walking around the street-side shops and most of the Sunshine City mall as well. Most of the stores in Sunshine City were having massive sales. I ended up buying a colorful shirt on sale at a massive girls’ fashion store called Alta. Clothing is fairly expensive, but bargain hunting is definitely possible. The shirts on sale that I looked at were ¥500-¥1000 each, and the shoes that Cat bought cost her ¥1050, which is comparable to what I pay for such things back in the States.

We had lunch at McDonald’s, which is more expensive than in the States but also tastes better. It’s hard to explain, but McDonald’s here is actually good, and eating there isn’t something that’s looked down on in the way it kind of is looked down on back home. They also have a lot of burgers that don’t exist in the States. This wasn’t my first time encountering such a thing, because in the Netherlands they have/had the McKroket and McRib, but it was still interesting. The most notable difference is the existence of the MegaMac, which is basically a BigMac with 4 hamburger patties instead of 2. Since it’s only ¥50 more for a MegaMac and since I figured that that’s something I needed to experience while I’m here, that’s what I got. It was pretty good, although they didn’t put enough sauce on it to match the amount of meat you get. If I do go to McDonald’s again before I leave, I think I’ll try the ebi (shrimp) burger.

Back at the dorm, Shaunte and I spent most of the night hanging out while Cat spent most of it texting and calling people. She’s become a lot more withdrawn since she got a phone. I still can’t decide if I should get one or not. If I do get one, I should do it soon, or it won’t be worth it anymore. ¥5900 isn’t very much, and for ¥300 off your prepaid time, you get unlimited texts and e-mails for a month. It’d be nice to be able to e-mail my friends and family more frequently. I miss feeling connected to the people I care about back home. Aside from that, though, I don’t really miss the Internet and cell phones all that much. I never liked phones to begin with, which is part of the reason why I feel like it might not be worth it.

Tuesday, July 8^th

We had to be at school at 9am today for orientation, which ended up being a lot of Tanaka-san repeating things he’d already told us before (attendance rules, etc.) but that he now needed to reiterate because of the new students. It was one of the most boring 3-hour sits of my life. Afterwards, they had lunch for us, which was nice, and we got to socialize and meet the new kids, but it was also kind of awkward because all the teachers came around to talk to us (in Japanese), which always makes me a little uncomfortable because I can’t help feeling like they’re judging us even outside the classroom like this.

After that, we finally got to hear which level we’ll be placed in. I ended up being placed in level 2 with all of my other groupmates. Seeing who got placed in level 3, though, I knew that I don’t really belong with them either. We got our textbooks, and going through the lessons, I figured out that I should essentially be in Level 2.5—which doesn’t exist. Level 2 is covering lessons 22 through 29, which all cover things we already did last semester at CMU. However, Level 3 starts at lesson 38. The lessons I actually need are lessons 30 through 37. But there’s no class for that.

I really don’t know what to do. I can’t really ask them to create a class just for me, but at the same time, I don’t want to not learn anything new, at least as far as grammar goes. I know I’ll learn a lot regardless in terms of vocabulary and conversational ability (and confidence in general), and I want to. But I don’t want to not learn any new grammar because then I’m worried that I’m not even going to place out of a single semester back home, and then this will all have kind of been a waste. I mean, it’s a great experience and all, but if I don’t get out of at least 1 semester, I’ll never have enough time to finish my minor. For the umpteenth time, I’m extremely frustrated that CMU’s Japanese program is so grammar- and writing-focused.

Anyway, after we got our books and such, we were free to go. Shaunte and Sean and I ended up going to the post office and then to Tokyu Hands, one of the biggest department stores. We bought note cards and other school supplies, and I also bought a few more gifts for people back home, as well as postcards. If you want one, be sure to e-mail me your address. I can always go back for more when I run out.

Wednesday, July 9^th

Today being the first official day of class, I don’t have to be at school until 1pm. From now on, class starts at 1:30pm and lasts until 4:45pm. The morning classes (9:00am-12:15pm) are only for the advanced levels, which is kind of a bummer because I feel morning classes would be more convenient. You go to class and then have the rest of the day to do what you want to do. We don’t have a choice, though.

I came to school early to try to use the computer lab. Unfortunately, it wasn't open today, so I'm at an Internet café again. I have a couple of important e-mails to send out. Up until now, the computer lab hasn’t been open every day, but starting tomorrow, it should be open 10am-4pm every day. I’ll probably end up coming to school early every few days from now on to use the lab, so I don’t spend all my money by going to Internet cafés.